Americans are giving less money to God

Charitable giving is on the rise at nonreligious institutions

In the world of charitable giving, your alma mater may be faring better than your maker. While Americans are becoming more giving, a new study finds that fewer and fewer of their donations are going to houses of worship.

Americans donated $316 billion to charitable causes in 2012, a 3.5% increase from 2011, a new report by the Giving USA Foundation found. But while charitable donations to education increased 7% to $41 billion, religious donations dropped slightly (by 0.2%) to $101.54 billion. “Americans continue to be the most generous people in the world, despite discretionary income percentages nearing all-time lows,” says Eileen Heisman, CEO of the National Philanthropic Trust. But donors are writing the checks to different recipients.

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That’s not to say that donations to religious institutions have dried up. In fact, they accounted for 32% of all charitable donations. But that’s down from around 38% a decade ago, according to Giving USA. And Heisman expects that number to continue to fall. “I don’t think it will plummet to zero,” she says. “At some point, it will level out; the question is when.” But there’s reason to think the next generation may be even less generous to religious institutions. One-in-three people under 30 had no religious affiliation versus just one-in-10 of those 65 and over, a 2012 Pew Research Center report found. Among all U.S. adults, 20% report having no religious affiliation, up from 15% in 2007.

“People don’t belong to religious institutions like they once did,” Heisman says. “The idea that the place of worship was the center of your social existence is no longer as strong as it once was.” More than 13 million people — nearly 6% of the U.S. public — identify as atheists or agnostics, and 33 million say they have no particular religious affiliation, Pew found. Instead or donating to religious institutions, they’re giving more to secular organizations like those that support the arts (up 7.8%), animals and the environment (up 6.8%) and, of course, education.

When the recession hit, many universities stepped up their requests for donations, while religious institutions may have been reluctant to ask their patrons to dig deeper. “A lot of charities were humbled by the recession,” Heisman says. Universities have some of the most sophisticated fund-raising programs in the country, experts say. “Giving to universities could be skewed by large donations from wealthy benefactors who like having libraries named after them,” says Charles Sizemore, a financial adviser in Dallas. Giving USA estimates that 80% of high net worth individuals give to education.

Why China’s billionaires give less

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China already has more billionaires than the U.S., yet the average Chinese citizen donates just $8 per year to charity.

To be sure, some religious organizations are using social media. Crowdsourcing websites like GiveMN.org and iBakeSale.com allow people to fund-raise for their local church, and the Christian social network MyChurch.org has a Facebook app to raise money. Two-thirds of congregations now offer followers some type of electronic giving, according to a March 2013 report by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. “This allows for more consistent revenue,” it found. But of the 3,100 U.S. congregations surveyed, 49% of the church leaders were not aware of or involved in fundraising.

While religious institutions may be losing out, the overall increase in charitable giving is seen as a good omen for the economy. Some 70% of charities forecast a rise in donations this year, although only 58% actually saw a rise in donations, according to an April 2013 survey by the Nonprofit Research Collaborative, a national group of nonprofits. But charitable donations are unlikely to reach the pre-recession 2007 high of over $344 billion for at least another 6 years, says Una Osily, director of research at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. “And even that depends on the economy,” she says.

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